


Contractual Obligations

by paperowl



Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies)
Genre: Adorable Peter Parker, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Fluff, Gen, Iron Man 2, Kid Peter Parker, Protective Tony Stark, Sassy Tony Stark, Stark Expo, Tony Stark Has A Heart, just a bit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-17
Updated: 2020-07-17
Packaged: 2021-03-04 18:42:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,745
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25151080
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/paperowl/pseuds/paperowl
Summary: Tony walked through a hall at the Stark Expo, admiring and sometimes sizing up the competition's exhibits. Yes, even at his own convention. He was wearing a hoodie and sunglasses, pretending like that would make him invisible, and making his way past yet another hovering car demonstration — really what was it with those? Even his dad had been enamored by the idea — when he felt a tug on his sleeve. He pulled his arm away reflexively and looked down, only to see a small boy with curly hair looking up at him.“Hey, Iron Man? I’m lost.”Or,Tony Stark's night of corporate espionage that'stechnicallysuperhero work is derailed by a kid looking for his aunt and uncle.
Relationships: Peter Parker & Tony Stark
Comments: 31
Kudos: 602
Collections: Irondad and his Iron kids, The Friendly Neighborhood Exchange, carolina’s | fics that have been devouRED





	Contractual Obligations

**Author's Note:**

  * For [wherermysocks](https://archiveofourown.org/users/wherermysocks/gifts).



> This is my first strictly fluff fic, and I think it turned out well despite throwing me from my usual h/c and angst comfort zone. I hope you enjoy it wherermysocks! As usual, beta'd by the lovely [clairdeloon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/clairdeloon).

Tony walked through the floor of an expo building; his expo, to be precise. The Stark Expo was in its opening week, and Tony wanted to see how it was doing on the ground. His ulterior motives may have included sizing up the competition, but that wasn't his priority. Or so he said, as he side-eyed Hammertech’s large exhibit. He was wearing a hoodie and sunglasses in an effort to disguise himself, in the hope that it would conceal him from prying eyes, and he could spend his whole evening as an anonymous person in the crowd. However, he couldn't deny that his goatee was strikingly unique and quite obvious to anyone looking closely enough. So far, though, he hadn’t even gotten any strange looks, so maybe he could pull it off all night.

Tony had been wandering around for almost an hour without incident when he felt a tug on his sleeve. Tony jolted at the unexpected touch and ripped his arm away, turning in the direction of the touch, expecting to have his cover blown. Instead, he found a small kid with curly hair looking up at him. Tony grimaced; of course it was some stupid kid that was going to notice him and make a big fuss.

"Mr. Stark?" the kid said in a surprised whisper, and it wasn't the kid who was going to blow his cover, it was him. The kid hadn’t known it was him until he'd turned around. 

"You've got the wrong guy," Tony said reflexively; the last thing he wanted was to cause a scene in the middle of an expo floor with no security. He wasn't as young as he used to be and he didn't have the suit on call yet, getting trampled to death was not on his agenda for the evening.

"No, I don't," the kid said, looking up at him determinedly. "You're Mr. Stark, I know because of the beard." 

"I'm not Mr. Stark. Now leave me alone," Tony said brusquely and started walking through the crowd. The kid followed close behind, eventually grabbing onto his sleeve and holding on with an iron grip. Tony continued power-walking through the crowd, wishing the kid would let go so he could go back to spying on his rivals.

"Kid, you're really cramping my style here. Let go." 

"No," was the stubborn response. Great, this was going great. So much for his evening of corporate espionage; he was going to get caught out here, all thanks to the stupid kid.

Tony walked until he found a staff door, pushed it open, and was greeted by the cool evening air. He held the door open long enough for the kid to make it through and then he let it slam shut behind him. He pulled the kid over to a nearby picnic bench and took off his sunglasses so he could look the kid in the eye.

"What do you want?"

The kid blinked up at him."I want you to help me find my aunt and uncle." 

"I- what?" That was not the response Tony was expecting; he’d been ready for the usual autograph and a photo query, maybe a special message to someone close, a fair amount of gushing about his heroic acts, kiss his boots and all that...

“I’ve looked everywhere and I can’t find them,” the kid said, and thank goodness he wasn’t crying.

“So look harder,” Tony said. 

“But I can’t!” the kid said crossly, “I need your help.”

"And how am I supposed to help you find your parents?" Tony asked, a snap in his voice. This was not what he’d signed up for this evening.

"You're an adult." The kid shrugged. "And Iron Man. Also, they’re not my parents.”

Tony sighed a little over-dramatically. “Any adult could help you find them. I’m not special.”

“Yes, you are,” the kid asserted. “Everyone else ignored me, you’re the only one who listened.”

“Kid, you’ve got a low bar if what I did is considered listening.” Damn it, there was no backing out of this now. Should he call Pepper? She’d know how to handle this.

The kid interrupted his train of thought. “Mr. Stark?”

“Yeah?” Tony asked with a sigh.

The kid’s voice started to waver. “What if we can’t find them? We have to fly back home tomorrow, what if they leave me here?”

Oh boy, panicking children were not something Tony ever wanted to deal with. He fumbled for a moment. “They won’t leave without you.”

“How do you know that?” Oh no, were those tears welling up in the kid’s eyes? 

“Uh…” _shit_ , “...because we’re gonna find them before then.” Well, he’d fallen into that one, hadn’t he. Years of dodging press questions should have trained him for this.

“We are?” the kid asked hopefully, all traces of worry gone.

“Apparently,” Tony said. “I guess we’d better get started now. Come on, ki-- what’s your name?”

“Peter.” The kid stuck out his hand towards Tony, who reluctantly grabbed it and shook.

“Now it’s official,” the kid — Peter — said seriously.

“What’s official?” Tony asked, mildly confused.

“You’re gonna help me look for my aunt and uncle. We shook on it and now you can’t go back, it’s contract law,” Peter said.

“...wait, what?” Then Tony’s brain caught up. “Now, hang on, contract law says you have to be eighteen, otherwise it’s void. Nice try, bud.”

“Aw, dang it,” Peter said, frowning a little. “You’ll still help me look for them, right?”

“Yeah.” Tony slid his sunglasses on and beckoned to the door they’d entered through. “Come on, let’s go.”

He walked towards the door, only to realize it had an ‘Employees Only’ sign, and that it only opened from the inside; there wasn’t even a handle out here. Tony tried it anyway, no luck.

He sighed. “Come on, kid, you want to sneak in?”

“You’re allowed to do that?” Peter asked, eyes widening.

“Yeah, I run this thing, remember?” Tony said, turning and walking towards the back of the building, making it a few steps before looking back to make sure the kid was following him. It turned out that it was pretty easy to make sure Peter was close; the kid wouldn’t quit talking. 

“Mr. Stark?” Peter asked.

“Hmm?” Tony hummed, barely listening.

“How did you make Intelli-crops? I’ve read your papers and tried to make some of my own but none of them worked. My uncle says it’s because we don’t have all the right chemicals, but that’s not true because —”

“Wait a minute, you’ve read my papers?”

“Yeah, sometimes my uncle has to help me with the really complicated stuff, but they’re super cool!”

“Oh. Wow,” Tony said, genuinely impressed. “What does your uncle do?”

“He’s an Agente Scelto in the Polizia.”

That was... not English, apparently the kid could speak Italian. Tony brushed past it, a question for later. “A police officer, he must be pretty smart to help you with all the science stuff.”

“Yeah,” Peter said, “But I think he only knows so much because he Googles it. Don’t tell him I said that though.”

“I won’t, don’t worry,” Tony said with a chuckle as they reached a back door. It had a keypad which Tony quickly hacked through, and then opened the door and pushed the kid through.

“So, where are you from?” Tony said, unable to control his curiosity after the Italian surprise.

“Italy,” Peter said, “Technically, I was born here, but my mom and dad died when I was little and I had to go to Italy to live with my aunt and uncle.” 

Ah, so that explained the lack of an accent. Italy was also quite a bit of a plane ride away, no wonder Peter was scared of being left behind. Unconsciously, Tony moved a little closer to the kid when they reached the expo area. 

“So, do you remember the last place you saw your aunt and uncle?” Tony asked, looking out at the sea of people and feeling a little sick at the idea that he was supposed to find the kid’s parents in this swarm of people.

“Yeah,” Peter said, and he grabbed Tony’s hand and started leading him through the crowd.

“What do your aunt and uncle look like?” Tony asked, scanning the crowd for people that might resemble Peter.

As Peter began to describe his aunt and uncle, May and Ben, in rather unhelpful terms, it occurred to Tony that he could talk to security, offload the kid to them, and be on his way. Except… he really didn’t want to let anyone know that he was here. He knew security would report to Pepper and then he’d be screwed. So, it appeared he was stuck with the kid for the evening.

Though it seemed that Peter was really trying to stay focused, he soon became too distracted by all the exhibits to stay on track for long and their path meandered more and more. Tony hadn’t been to this part of the expo hall yet, though, so he didn’t mind too much. It helped that the kid was practically dragging him through the expo hall; no one gave him a second look.

The exhibit that caught Peter’s attention enough to make him pause to examine was a solar-powered plane. The goal was to get it to fly for twenty-four hours, and aside from the plane itself, there were also blueprints and early scale model prototypes. Based on visuals alone, Tony was pretty sure they’d make it. 

After the plane, they paused more and more, and soon their pauses turned into stops. A car powered by hydrogen fuel cells, a pill-sized medical camera. The Martin Jetpack, with a record flight time for a jetpack, attracted Peter like a magnet.

“That’s so cool!” he said, his mouth agape at the video and the jetpack itself. And despite himself, Tony smiled at the kid’s wide-eyed wonder.

Every so often, Tony would remember that they were looking for Peter’s aunt and uncle and wonder why they hadn’t gone to security, before remembering that he was going for a night of freedom for once, and he didn’t need someone messing up that plan by reporting his whereabouts. And then, like clockwork, the kid would pull him towards an exhibit with wide eyes and a contagious grin. Peter picked genuinely interesting things, too; who cared about malaria-resistant mosquitoes when you could look at robotic nano-spiders instead?

Okay, maybe Tony cared a little about the mosquitoes, he’d make a sizable donation to that organization later. In the meantime, he could tell that Peter was beginning to lag, tired out from all the walking. Tony decided they needed a break, so the next time they came upon a food stand, he ordered some hot pretzels and sat the kid down to eat. Peter’s energy was flagging, and as much as they were enjoying each other’s company, he needed to find his aunt and uncle. 

Despite the evident exhaustion, Peter was still talking a mile a minute while also inhaling his food at a rate that made Tony take pause.

“Kid, slow down, there, you don’t want to choke!” Tony said without thinking and surprised himself a little bit by saying it.

“Sorry,” Peter said sheepishly, substantially slowing down both his talking and eating.

“It’s alright, kid, I just don’t want to have to deal with more than one emergency at a time. Now, what were you saying about the jetpack?” Tony asked, letting the kid go off on a tangent.

It struck Tony halfway through his pretzel that this kid was probably a lot like him. It must have been very strange for just about everyone he knew that he’d been spouting off advanced calculus at twelve and engaging in debates many adults couldn’t keep up with. The perspective was weird.

“How old are you, Peter?” Tony asked, prompted by his line of thought.

“Almost nine,” Peter said, dipping his last bite of pretzel in a copious amount of cheese sauce and shoving it into his mouth.

“Oh,” Tony said, finishing up his pretzel as well. 

Once both of them had eaten, they were ready to hit the expo floor again in search of Peter’s aunt and uncle and nothing else, or at least it started that way. Yet again they were drawn this way and that as both Peter and Tony were derailed by cool exhibits.

Without even realizing it, they’d wandered towards the large Oscorp section, and Tony decided that maybe he still had ulterior motives. Yes, he was supposed to have a bit of a moral compass since he was now a superhero, but Oscorp was doing shady, possibly dangerous experiments, and that warranted superhero intervention. On the other hand, he didn’t want to endanger Peter by spying on Oscorp, specifically because of those shady experiments. Before he knew it, they were in the thick of Oscorp’s exhibits, and before he could fully debate the pros and cons of trying a little spying, the kid had disappeared.

Tony panicked a bit, he was supposed to be looking after this kid, and - oh. There was Peter, already ducking under a cord blocking off something Tony couldn’t make out. Well, that decided that, the kid was not spying on his watch. Tony pushed his way through the crowd a little more fiercely than he should have given that he was still trying to stay inconspicuous. Unfortunately, before he could make it all the way to Peter, an Oscorp employee noticed him.

Tony could hear him yelling, “Hey, kid, you’re not supposed to be in there!” and once he got close enough, Tony called Peter’s name.

Peter looked up at him and seemed to just realize that several people were looking at him and an angry Oscorp employee was heading his way. He quickly scrambled towards Tony, ducking under the cord and grabbing Tony’s hand, leading him away from the scene.

“Hey, Mister! You need to watch your kid better!” the Oscorp employee yelled after Tony as the two walked away quickly. Once they’d made it a ways away from the scene, Peter slowed to a stop, breathing hard. He was clearly a little shaken from the encounter. Tony worried Peter would look up at him with tears streaming down his face, but instead it was a strangled look that sent a rush of dread through Tony, more so than tears would have.

“Kid, you okay?” Tony asked, a little frantically.

Peter wheezed. “I’m okay, it’s just an asthma attack, Mr. Stark.”

“Kid you sound like you’re dying, do you have an inhaler?” Tony asked, not reassured at all.

“I-” Peter trailed off, and for a moment Tony worried he’d lost so much air he couldn’t talk, but instead, a man rushed up to him. “Peter!”

The man reached out to hug Peter freezing in place when the kid coughed out, “Inhaler.” The man’s face changed immediately and he beckoned to a woman who’d come up next to him. She had an inhaler already in her hands to give to him. The three of them acted calmly, and it was clearly a dance they’d performed many times over the years. In just a few minutes, Peter was back to breathing normally. Tony was glad they’d stopped in an empty space between two booths that wasn’t heavily trafficked.

The man and woman- Peter’s aunt and uncle - Tony realized, started throwing questions at Peter as soon as he could talk easily, his uncle in English and his aunt in Italian. Peter answered their questions quickly, and a pointing finger prompted them to turn towards Tony. 

The man... Ben, Tony assumed, got up and walked over to him. “Thank you so much, sir, I don’t think we would have found him without you.”

“No problem,” Tony said, realizing that it had indeed been no problem and he’d even enjoyed it a fair amount.

“I’ll let it slide that he got into somewhere he shouldn’t have, since you calling his name is what tipped us off,” the man said.

“He’s a slippery one, but he’s really smart. Keep giving him those research papers, you’ve got a budding scientist on your hands,” Tony said, clapping the man on the shoulder.

“Thanks, Mr .uh...?” the man said as Tony started walking back towards the bustling aisle.

“Tony, Tony Stark,” Tony said, with a smirk and a wave to Peter as he melted back into the crowd.

**Author's Note:**

> Yell at me about your favorite lines, because this whole fic is just dialogue anyway and IM2 Tony + kid Peter = absolutely iconic interactions.
> 
> You can also find me on tumblr, [@papered-owl](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/papered-owl)
> 
> _Prompt: Tony stark helps Italian tourist, 10 year old Peter get back to his aunt_


End file.
